Linda Lau: Trees are green and tall.
Rae Mansfield: They sway in the breeze.
Linda Lau: I like climbing them so that I can see the city from the tallest point.
Rae Mansfield: I can hang out with birds and owls and small cute furry animals and sometimes not so cute furry animals.
Linda Lau: Today, I decided to do something different.
Rae Mansfield: I climbed to the top of the tree, along with a chair not specifically designed for a tree.
Linda Lau: I had to reinforce the chair and the other tools I brought with me so that it could fit on the branches.
Rae Mansfield: And then the squirrels at the end of the branch started bouncing because they wanted me to fall.
Linda Lau: I held on for dear life.
Rae Mansfield: The branch started to snap.
Linda Lau: And so I grabbed my rope and tied my chair to the trunk of the tree so I wouldn’t fall off.
Rae Mansfield: Somebody took my picture and I ended up becoming Internet famous as “Strange person fighting squirrels in tree.”
Linda Lau: So now whenever I see a tree I think of the squirrels who helped me become famous.
Photo Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Northeast Region, “Delmarva Fox Squirrel Caught on Remotely-Triggered Camera,” 2004.